Extensive reading is most easily understood by contrasting it to intensive reading—the type of reading most often found in foreign language learning programs. Intensive reading materials are often hard for students and are packed with new vocabulary or difficult grammar. Extensive reading materials are easy and have few unfamiliar words and little to no new grammar. Intensive reading is slow. In many cases students spend an entire hour working through just a few paragraphs or pages. Extensive reading is fast. Students might read 20-40 pages or more of foreign language text in an hour.

Intensive Reading

Extensive Reading

Hard Grammar

Easy Grammar

Many unfamiliar words

Under 2% of words are new

Read 1-2 pages in an hour

Read 25+ pages in an hour

What kind of materials are suitable?

Extensive reading materials should be three things—easy, authentic and interesting. These goals conflict to some degree. As anyone who has had the experience of trying to read in a language they don’t know very well, nearly everything they want to read is too hard. At the same time, those few texts that are easy enough, are usually very artificial (e.g. textbooks) or very boring (e.g. books for three year-olds).

Get books the students can actually read without a dictionary

The most important thing about choosing extensive reading materials for a classroom is that they are easy enough. There is a tremendous pressure to accept a text with “just a few” extra vocabulary items since it feels like the students will learn more. This is a trap. While intensive reading is valuable and has its place, the benefits students get from extensive reading disappear quickly if students cannot comfortably read and instead find themselves decoding and translating.

The bar identified by L2 acquisition researchers is that at least 98% of the vocabulary in a text must be comprehensible to the students. About one or two new words per page and maybe one new sentence structure per session is the goal to aim for. If the students can already understand that much of the text, new words can often be learned entirely through context. If these few new words appear again and again through out the text, all the better. Words learned like this aren’t learned all at once, of course. Students start with a fuzzy understanding of a new word, which gradually gets clearer and clearer as they encounter it again and again in new contexts. This may seem like a slow way to go, but as I argued in my intensive reading article, there really is no short-cut. Translations accompanied by a few example sentences are never enough alone.

When choosing books for your students, one good test is to take a page from the text you are considering, give it to your students for a few minutes, and ask how many words they don’t know. Depending on how honest your students are, you’ll get a good idea of whether or not they could read the text. If you are worried they won’t admit what they don’t know, then cover up about twenty words scattered throughout the page, and photocopy it. You can then give the students a cloze test. If they can complete over 80% of the sentences with the correct words or reasonable alternatives, use the text. If they can’t, pick an easier one.

There’s nothing worse than studying a language from materials filled with strange, wooden-sounding phrases that native speakers would never actually say. And yet, these kinds of materials are pretty common in foreign language instruction. Sometimes this is due to pressures to teach certain grammar structures or to prepare students for an examination. In isolation, that may not be a terrible decision since learning core grammatical patterns does help bring more authentic materials within a language learner’s reach. Extensive reading is not the time, though. When extensive reading, keep to the most natural texts possible. Reading a lot will improve a learner’s grammar but that’s not the primary goal.

Choose the most interesting books possible

At very low levels, there aren’t a lot of reading options that are easy for a second language learner. However, within the constraints of what texts are usable, it is imperative to choose the most interesting ones possible. In a classroom setting, very low-level students may need help from a teacher and need to go through the same story together. In this case, choose something with as broad of an appeal as possible. As students get more comfortable with books in the target language, they can and should be choosing their own. In my own experience teaching over a thousand students, I haven’t yet encountered one who didn’t start wanting to read specific books after having read a dozen or so at a given difficulty level. As long as students have had several successful reading experiences in the language and there are interesting choices, it’s almost inevitable that they’ll start finding themselves comfortable with more and more complex books over time.

How much should an L2 learner read?

Assuming, one free hour per day, aim to read at least 25 pages per day. If there’s only half an hour to spend on reading, then read at least 10 pages. This may seem like a lot and, for students who are reading normal paperback books with few pictures, it is. A native reader typically reads 40 to 100 pages per hour, so this is a bit over half the rate of a native reader on the slow end of the normal range.

There are two reasons for reading so much. First of all, it forces you to use dictionaries sparingly. As I encountered in a very painful way when learning Chinese, every 5 minutes spent looking through a dictionary is another 5 minutes in which very little language is acquired. The second reason to read so much is that reading too slowly interferes with comprehension. In normal reading, there are certain neurological processes at work that depend on sufficient reading speed (Day and Bamford, 1998). According to Nuttall, “speed, enjoyment and comprehension are closely linked with one another” (1996: 128). When adults read in their own languages, they take in entire phrases at a time, not individual words. If an L2 learner reads too slowly, word by word, it is even possible to forget the meaning of the first few words in a sentence before reading the last.

What are the benefits of Extensive Reading (ER)?

It seems obvious that it is better for a student to learn 20 new words while reading 20 pages of a fairly easy and interesting text, than it is to spend 20 minutes memorizing the same words and then struggle through a few difficult, boring paragraphs followed by grammar and translation drills. (For a look at one such difficult text look at page four of this report.) However, I’ll outline the main points below:

ER teaches learners about the culture of the target language users, which will allow learners to more easily join the L2 speech community

ER can consolidate previously learned language

ER helps to build confidence with extended texts

ER facilitates the development of prediction skills

How can these benefits be maximized?

Remember that newly acquired vocabulary is fragile. Therefore, the most important vocabulary to use is the vocabulary just learned. Obviously, you don’t want to introduce too much new vocabulary at one time, either. Aside from making sure that the difficulty of your texts is appropriate, it is also important to make sure that they are interesting to the students. The more interesting the texts are, the more the students will like reading (and the language in general), and the sooner they will start doing voluntary reading on their own. See this diary of a JFL (Japanese as a foreign language) learner’s extensive reading experiences.

What are the difficulties?

Using extensive reading in a classroom is, by nature, a difficult thing to do. Different students are at different levels. It takes some work to make a viable curriculum in which not everyone is necessarily reading the same thing at the same time. Some students, who have been studying a foreign language for a while in traditional a class, resist extensive reading at first. They feel that if it isn’t hard, it isn’t “real learning”. It is absolutely vital to explain the rational and benefits to them. Most difficult of all, particularly in an EFL as opposed to an ESL environment, is getting the appropriate reading materials. They can be expensive, hard to find, or simply unavailable, depending on where you are. It also takes some planning to effectively keep track of which students have which books and make sure they are all returned. In my next article on language learning, I’ll talk about some of the extensive reading materials that I have found useful.

Comments

Well, research has supported the use of ER for pretty much all ages. I personally have only used it for teaching 11 to 18 year olds. I myself had very good experiences doing extensive reading when I was studying Japanese at the age of 24. Also, my next door neighbor’s 76 year old mother did quite a bit of ER after she moved to the US (from Russia).

Honestly, I don’t know anybody who’s had disappointing results with ER as long as material of the appropriate difficulty is used.

[…] In nearly all big EFL cram school chains, native English speakers teach at least half of each class. Students do receive massive amounts of authentic English input. The problem is that far too little of it is understood. In order to be acquired, new vocabulary and grammar structures must be encountered hundreds of times in contexts where they are fully understood. Very few schools will give their students this opportunity. Memorizing and reciting difficult speeches may impress parents, but it does little for the language development of the students. The same problem exists with the reading included in EFL curriculums, if it is included at all. Despite the overwhelming evidence in support of extensive reading, most curriculums focus exclusively on intensive reading. […]

dilek

January 15th, 2007 at 1:56 AM

I want to learn about differences between extensive and intensive reading.Could you help me, please?Immediately,if it is possible!

[…] A variety of informal learning methods, with repetitive listening and reading, and extensive reading, playing a large role in the beginning (finding the optimum methods is part of what this experiment […]

Unfortunately, no. There are some extremely limited efforts at translating some ESL ones into Japanese, but CSL lags far, far behind.

pie

May 27th, 2008 at 2:52 PM

thank so much for this information.

Kevin

May 30th, 2008 at 7:35 AM

I’ve just been turned on to this strategy and I’m quite curious. How would you be able to do this in a class of quite varied skill levels? I would imagine that it would be a bit of trial and error matching students to texts which could take a few days. Also, how do you evaluate? I would think that constant testing would undermine the goal of promoting reading for pleasure.

Anyway, I’m going to pursue some of the links you provide and I appreciate your article as it is a clear thus useful introduction.

I have found your wording very easy to read 😛 I just wanted to let you know I have been reading your language learning category, I’m studying to become a language teacher, and I have no experience, but I’m fascinated about everything I learn daily.

Have a lovely day, and thank you for sharing your ideas.

-Xochitl

Beatrice Somuah

September 13th, 2008 at 2:00 AM

I have found your article really interesting. I will like to know more about extensive reading in relation to how it helps pupils improve their learning of other subjects. Thank you very much and kindly send me materials on extensive reading if available.

Firstly I would like to thank you, because you learned us alot in these your information.

Today, at the university in methodology course, we discussed these types of reading and consecuantly we intrested with them, so I decided to open this site in order to show at extra information about this topic.

thank you very much,,,

Waleed Al-Azhar University of Gaza

Dom Jones

February 5th, 2009 at 8:51 AM

Hi Mark I would like to improve my Japanese by using Extensive Reading. There are lots of graded readers in English; do you know of similar Japanese graded readers? Any help appreciated cheers Dom

For Beginning learners of Traditional Chinese, there is a series of readers called China Breeze. These readers are like the graded English Readers, but only books for 300 and 500 character levels have been published. Information about the series says there should be books for a 2000 character level. There are also two readers that also have pinyin above the characters and are adaptations of more well-known modern writers works.

Nguyen

March 4th, 2009 at 11:17 AM

Hi Mark, I’m really interested in your article. I’m going to teach a course on Extensive Reading in English for univeristy students. What should i teach? Please send me some useful resources for this course! Thanks a lot! Best wishes, Nguyen

happy

September 12th, 2009 at 5:57 PM

thanks for the very useful article you’ve posted. it is really useful and gives a clear idea of why extensive reading is as much important as intensive reading

Adriana Urpia

October 5th, 2009 at 6:32 AM

Your article about ER is superb, very clarifying. I’m sure ER helps students improve their communicative skills (writing, reading, speaking) and I am an example of that as I can communicate pretty well in 3 languages besides mine, Portuguese. Thank u.

Ali Qaffarie

June 14th, 2010 at 2:48 PM

I’m from Iran and the informations that i found in this website are usefull. thank you so much.

Hi, i was looking for some articles and paper around ER, that i faced the above mentioned information they were really beneficial and to the point. yesterday, i read a critique article including that we cant, for sure, say that ER has been beneficial in ESLT ,becuase the reseaches done in this area were under poor condition and intervening variables were not considered. Is studying on ER difficult that it doesnt give us certain result? i want to know ,please ,because i want to do a research on it here in Iran for ESL.

Wow… Never considered that there were so much involved in how fast a child reads. I would have thought that encouraging them to look up the words they don’t understand was the better way to go. That is the way my mother taught me. Seems to have worked.

[…] first experienced the benefits for my students, there weren’t that many people talking about extensive reading online. I wrote about it on this blog and later used graded readers from Oxford University Press […]